The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test- Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature 14 years ago today on 24 September 1996. Signed by 185 of the UN’s 192 Member States, the Treaty is designed to constrain the research and development of nuclear weapons by banning all nuclear test explosions in all environments, indefinitely. Given the undeniable security and non-proliferation […]
Game Time for New START
By Alex Rothman Published in The Asheville Citizen-Times on September 26, 2010. Despite the near-unanimous support for the treaty by prominent experts, most Republicans have yet to take a position on the arms control pact. After 20 hearings and more than four months of debate, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is gearing up to vote […]
Budget Cuts Threaten U.K. Trident Replacement
Published in World Politics Review on September 14, 2010. When George Osborne, Britain’s new chancellor of the exchequer, recently announced that the Ministry of Defense (MoD) must now pay for the modernization of the Trident submarine-based nuclear deterrent out of its own day-to-day budget, it marked a stark change from previous policy, by which the […]
Sharing New START’s Negotiating Record Is Unwarranted
by Kingston Reif Published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on September 17, 2010. On September 16, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved New START, the bilateral treaty signed in April that would verifiably reduce US and Russian nuclear weapons. Three Republican senators — Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isakson — voted in […]
Making the 2012 Middle East Conference Work
By Chad O’Carroll Efforts to place unique pressure on Israel over its presumed nuclear arsenal could scuttle plans for the scheduled 2012 Conference on establishing a Middle Eastern zone free of weapons of mass destruction, President Barack Obama said earlier this month. In summarizing Obama’s comments, the White House suggested that “the Conference will only […]
